


Shorts

by Ypofero_Faraday



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One, Transformers: Prime
Genre: F/M, Gen, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2020-10-11 03:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20539172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ypofero_Faraday/pseuds/Ypofero_Faraday
Summary: Character analyses, short stories, stand-alone's, and other pieces that don't belong to anything larger in my collection. I'm just testing the AO3 waters here, figuring out how it works before I bring in any of my bigger works. My goal is to be post some real stories for NaNoWriMo.





	1. Chapter 1

Chromia

The issue was, by the time they arrived, she had already taken out her guards, the patrols, and the officer in charge of the base. She had then proceeded to chase out any remaining Decepticons that had been assigned to Stanix, leaving a trail of carnage and frames in her wake. And when they finally chased her down, she was in the process of dismembering a particularly unlucky mech with a pilfered energon halberd. 

Arcee had been in hysterics upon reuniting with her sister, but the elder femme had scoffed when the ‘rescue party’ was brought to her attention. 

And Ironhide, jaw hanging loose as it could go, turned a beautiful shade of blue when the cerulean femme turned her blazing gaze towards him.

“Shut your mouth,” Ratchet spat and spun on a heel strut. “You’ll catch flies.”

“Oh, he’s caught something, alright,” Chromia quipped as she walked past and flicked the mech’s chin. “But you should close that, or someone’s liable to think of it as an invitation.”


	2. Knockout

Knockout

He was a sexy slaggard, and he knew it; vain, selfish, egotistical, and a level of narcissistic that challenged Starscream. By all appearances and interactions with the mech, he seemed shallow, cowardly, and indifferent to anything that wasn’t his paint or racing. But there was also a reason Knockout had survived as long as he had in that pit-spawned war.

He was a native of the Titan-colony of Velocitron, created with the sole purpose of speed. But that did not pertain solely to ground speed. And while Knockout’s top speed was on par with the average jet, he was also smart. His processor was capable of working as fast as his frame could go, and compared to the average Cybertronian, he was veritable genius. He was a scientist of the frame, of aerodynamics and aesthetics. He knew how a frame could move, where they were limited, their top speed, their maneuverability, from a single inspection. And in a fight, if it came to one, he knew where frames were weakest.

When he moved to Cybertron, and designated to Kaon by the still-in-power Senate, he applied his skill and knowledge to medicine, a field in high-demand in the low-class city-state. It was there that he met the mech that would not only become his mentor and teacher but a dear friend.

Breakdown taught Knockout the ways of Cybertron, of how to look out for himself in a system that would see a mech broken and beaten, and that applied to more than just the gladiators who were paid to do so.

So Knockout picked up the staff, an energon staff to be exact. And as in everything that he did, he wielded it with grace and precision. What he lacked in physical strength, he more than made up for in speed and accuracy.

When the war broke out, he followed Breakdown into the world of revolution, though he maintained his love of looking fabulous and being the fastest on any road.


	3. Starscream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Took some liberties with his background. Not set in any particular universe.

Starscream was, for all his flaws, as deadly as he was arrogant. He was proud of his skill and intellect but not without reason, unparalleled in his chosen field of science and unchallenged in aerial combat. 

He had been created into as royal a lineage as possible in the Golden Era of Cybertron, charge of the Wing Lord of Vos and heir to that throne, but he was belittled for his excellence in a non-combatant field of study. Science, as complex as it came, was his passion, and an upbringing in the most controversial and cut-throat political arena quickly made him into a wicked and efficient leader of the upcoming generation.

He murdered his Guardians to gain his seat in the Iacon Senate and maintained a similar ideology of removing threats as he rooted himself deep into the corrupt underbelly of Cybertronian government.

Insulted and belittled, though this time for his arrogance, he kindled the resentment growing for any he deemed inferior to him. His political stances and proposals were viewed as too ambitious and cut-throat for the senators and council-mechs that had grown complacent and comfortable in their power and authority. And by the time the war broke out, Starscream had more than enough reason to want to see all their helms on pikes.

Megatron offered him the power and authority he had always deemed was rightfully his; no other mech alive was smart or willing enough to make the right decisions for the future of Cybertron, and that grew to include many of the mechs that had worn the same faction insignia as him.

The transition from senator to officer was one that exposed more of Starscream’s ruthlessness than even he knew he was capable of, and he loved it. He was brutal and efficient on the battlefield and unrivaled when it came to aerial combat, despite his initial resentment of it. He saw it as a means to an end, an end in which he ruled.

At the height of the war, he was so lost in his lust for power that even his own trine did not recognize him; as crazed and sadistic as Megatron had become. He killed because he could, and he was relentless in his attempts at treason, none of which showed the intellect and wit of the mech that he had once been. He seethed and raged after every failure, and his brothers watched with piteous gazes as Starscream lost his mind.


	4. Megatronus

In his youth, when he was only just starting to gain traction in the Pits and, in turn, gain his reputation, Megatron was a much different mech. 

“He was rugged, definitely had more than a few rough edges, was bordering on obnoxiously loud, had a crude sense of humor… but he, for all his faults, had a good spark. He really did. He was charismatic, sure, when he needed to be and when he had decacycles to prepare a speech. In any other situation, Megatronus had a tendency to stumble quite fantastically over his words, often getting ahead of himself, too excited when trying to explain something he found interesting, or simply becoming too flustered to speak… I always found that adorable, and he would always cringe abashedly when I told him as much.

“But, oh, he could be suave; quite a proper gentlemech when he wanted to be. Problem was, he generally preferred not to be and would create his own rules of etiquette in any given situation. I would try to tell him there were rules to follow, and he would just grin at me crookedly and say, ‘but I want to make the rules'.

"How dreadful that single statement sounds now…”


	5. Of Companions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prime Universe

Bulkhead was not the sort of mech to get angry for no reason. He was gruff and carried more than his fair share of traumas, but for all of his tumultuous history, he had maintained what composure he could. He preferred creation more than his frame-type and occupation would suggest, he enjoyed simple pleasures and the comfort of routine, and, above all, he loved a tiny, spunky human named Miko Nakadai.

…

Bumblebee was the youngest for so long. He had been raised in war where games were played for keeps and bets were made with lives. His toys had been capable of killing mechs, and his teachers taught him how to use them. He didn’t know what it meant to be a child, to play and have fun. He could only imagine, on the days that weren't as dark as some and there was hope for so future that wasn't stained in energon, what it might have been like to have a little brother or a sparkling of his own. 

But then another bomb would fall, a building or city go up in smoke and down in ruin, and he would remember that they were dreams. And no one could afford to indulge in dreams.

Then they went to earth. Then he met Raphael. And his world opened up.

He played games that held no consequence beyond a bruised ego, he made bets that had once resulted in him wearing a ‘tutu’, and he discovered that the things humans called ‘Nerf guns’ were utterly incapable of killing people. He got to be a teacher of math and science, what he knew of the subjects. He observed what it meant to be a child, the innocence the experience exuded and the joy of simply existing in a moment.

Bumblebee would sit with Raphael, and he didn’t have to imagine anymore. He had a little brother, a sparkling to call his own, a Charge in every sense of the word to care for and love as his own. And he dared to hope again.  
…


	6. Academy Days

They met in the academy. Wheeljack really, truly hadn’t meant for his invention to blow up… again. It was a simple mistake. It was liable to happen any time anyone was working with mildly radioactive metals around spontaneously combustible chemical compounds. And he was an engineer, not a chemist! Really, it was his instructor’s fault for trusting him with nitroglycerin. 

He was fine, thanks for asking, though no one ever did… ask, that is. No, they just beat him up for ruining another senior design project, and Wheeljack was running low on hiding places. So it was with a slight hysterical laugh and the sounds of angry curses following too closely behind him that Wheeljack jumped behind the nearest object large enough to hide his frame behind.

“What the-,” the red and white mech startled when the smaller mech ducked behind his backstruts and grabbed onto his armor.

“Please hold still, or they’ll see me!” the white and grey mech pleaded and maneuvered the larger between him and his assailants.

Ratchet looked up towards where angry shouts had rounded the corner of the building, accompanied by several scorched graduate students. He raised an optic ridge towards the smaller mech now very effectively using his bulkier frame to hide behind. It wouldn’t be enough, of course, but then again, those new mechs didn’t look all that smart.

“He went that way!” he shouted, added a touch of rough indignation to his voice for good measure. The mechs looked his way just long enough to follow where his digit was pointed before disregarding him completely in favor of the direct path to the officer’s barracks… not that they knew that.

.

Wheeljack was, in his own highly regarded opinion, the perfect mix of genius and idiot.


	7. Praxus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: OC character death, OC child death, wide-spread destruction. It's Praxus, and it's not pretty.

Modem trotted along beside his carrier, little servo clasped tightly to pale orange armor and optics beaming up at the most beautiful femme he’d ever saw. His carrier glanced down, a curious light passing through her pale yellow optics at the radiant smile cast up at her. 

“What?” she queried with a sly smile.

“I love you,” Modem chirped, skipping a step to hug her thigh before continuing on his way, dragging a stunned carrier along beside him.

Meda laid a servo over her chassis, feeling the warmth permeate to the spark beneath as she gazed down in wonder at her youngest creation. “Oh mechling,” she poured all the love she could back over the relatively new bond. “I love you more,” she said softly.

Modem just whirred and continued skipping along the gleaming stone sidewalk. Meda continued to stare, taking him all in. She watched him stumble over too big peds and pick absent-mindedly at his new armor, watched his doorwings wiggle in excitement on his back struts, and glanced up at the still growing, red chevron just peaking up over the top of his helm.

A Praxian, through and through.

And Meda couldn’t have been more proud.

.

“CARRIER!” Modem shrieked through the dust choked air, young vents stalling from the sudden and extreme shift in atmosphere and struggling to keep up. “Carr- eck!” he broke off in painful coughs that had him hunching over. Knees struck the ground, rubble digging into the joints and grinding into gears.

His little frame trembled as he cried, so scared and confused by the sudden chaos that had fallen from the sky. 

Others screamed as well, and Modem could just barely make out the shapes of bots running this way and that through the thick, acrid smoke. “Carrier,” he sobbed again, quieter now, quickly losing strength. His vision began to haze around the edges, whether from his own pain or from the thickening smog, he couldn’t tell.

He was confused. They had been happy not three breems ago, walking to their favorite iced mercury parlor in the warm sun, him and his carrier. They were supposed to meet up with his creator and older siblings there. But now there was so much darkness and pain and he didn’t know where anyone was.

He was scared. Modem had never been alone, not for long. He always had one of his creators with him, or his brother. And now he was all by himself and the world was so dark and scary and he didn’t know what was happening. 

There were jets tearing across the shrouded sky, engines shrieking and snarling, raining down those big, ground shattering explosions onto the city-state. Panic spread like the fires wrought by the Seekers above, and Modem couldn’t shake free of its constricting grip.

Grit dug into his peds as he scrambled away when a bot nearly ran over him in their own frantic attempt at escape. Modem’s mad backpedal was halted by a wall of some indiscernible mass, and he curled into it, seeking the safety that was supposed to come with tucking into small places. 

His whole frame trembled, though now he couldn’t tell if it was from fear, pain, or fatigue. 

Because now he was tired. 

He was so tired, and it was so hard to vent. It felt like there was a weight settling in his chassis and venting faster only seemed to make it worse. Coughs wracked his small frame again and something wet and hot dribbled down his chin. He wiped it away with a shaky servo and stared mutely at the bright blue staining his digits. 

Why was he leaking? Why did it hurt so bad to vent? Where was his carrier?! She would know what was wrong, she would fix this, she could fix anything. 

But Modem couldn’t even stop his servo from falling to his side, let alone find the strength to call out again. It just seemed so much work and he was so tired.

Maybe he should just go to recharge. Carrier would find him and take him home, and everything would be better when he woke up, he knew it would. Carrier always took care of him, she would find him. She would find him. She would-

Modem felt his frame slip down the wall he was leaning against, and he curled onto his side, doorwings tucked down his backstrut just as creator had taught him to do when he was hurt. He heaved another painful vent because that was what his brother told him to do when he was scared; vent. He laid his helm down and felt his optics shutter heavily. He would just go to recharge and everything would be ok when he woke up; that was what carrier always said. Recharge made everything better.

So Modem would recharge, and carrier would find him.

She would-

.

Meda didn’t even have a chance to see Modem before he was knocked away by the shock wave, likely the only thing that saved him from sharing her fate, before a building fell on her. Half her limps crushed, her internals leaking out, and every internal system screaming at her, Meda couldn’t even open her optics or twitch a digit.

She died hearing her creation’s cries for her, so close yet so far away, unable to respond, helpless, forced to listen as they faded into the cacophony that was Praxus dying with its citizens. She died feeling nothing but Modem’s, her sparkmate’s, and her eldest two creations’ fear and pain and panic. She died in a war she didn’t even know had started for a cause that was never explained to her.

Meda and Modem were among the first 200 thousand that died in Praxus in Megatron’s official declaration of war.


	8. The Medic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: OC death, destruction. Being a wartime medic is unspeakably horrible.  
Rating here is probably Teen+

It was a sight all too common, one Ratchet wished more than anything else would stop repeating itself. But the femme remained, the carrier without creation. He knew the look in her optics, the despair and the void. She was searching for something that wasn’t there, and Ratchet had seen many creators follow their creations to the Well because of it. 

He wished he could help. He wished desperately that he had the time and resources to save every broken spark he came across. But it simply wasn’t the case, not in war.

Spark heavy, he approached.

She didn’t acknowledge him. It was possible she didn’t even notice him, lost as she was in her grief. She jolted hard when he laid a servo on her shoulder, but her optics remained wide and unfocused when they darted to him. 

Ratchet felt his spark ached, already knowing she was too far gone.

“I know where he went,” he muttered.

The femme’s optics flickered, her hold on her creation’s frame tightening. 

“I can-” Ratchet’s vocals cracked and it was a battle all its own not to back down. “I can show you where he is.”

It was a mercy, he told himself again and again. The carrier would not recover in time to save herself, might not ever recover to any acceptable extent. She would die in some other way, at some other time, in some horrible manner. It was mercy.

“… what?”

Ratchet pulled a needle and vial from deep subspace. “I know where your creation has gone,” he repeated, and the ache in his chassis grew. 

He hated this.

He hated the Decepticons for driving him to this.

He hated himself for resorting to it. It was a cop out, a cheat. It was sick and twisted and it made him want to purge.

“I can lead you to him,” he filled the needle with a mild blue serum, deceiving in its tranquility.

Claws gripped his arm, and the carrier’s optics were focused entirely on his. “Medic,” she choked on the word, like she was speaking around a gag, and tapped her chassis with shaking digits. “Please. It hurts.”

Rage and grief burned behind Ratchet’s optics as he took her arm. His digits found the main line with practiced ease. “I know, sweetspark.”

Coolant fell from her optics now, pained and lost and pleading. Her mouth moved, but no words formed, and in the place of a response, the femme tapped her heaving chassis, above her spark.   
The hiss of fluid injection filled his audios, quiet against the roar of a dying city and deafening beside the quiet trickle of coolant against dead plating. The femme’s faceplates contorted, her sorrow breaking through the shock, and she sobbed.

It was ugly and anguished, and Ratchet pulled her against his chassis. She heaved and cried, vocals cracking and keening, servos grasping and shaking. Ratchet shook in his maelstrom of emotions but sat firm as the carrier grieved. 

Of all the injustices that he’d witnessed over the long vorns at war, this was one of the worst. He had seen her, this Pit-bound carrier, had seen her pick up a weapon in the sole name of the child she knew was a battlefield away from her. She had fought denta and digit through mecha that ought to have crushed her beneath a digit of their own. 

She had won.

She should have won.

But she had made it through the fire only to have hope slip through her digits. Primus damn it all, it wasn’t fair.

Ratchet held the young femme as he’d held many before her and, he knew with grim certainty, he would hold many more, like his own creation so that he might know some fraction of her anguish and thus mourn her as she deserved. 

“May the Heralds of the Well welcome you,” Ratchet muttered, with all reverence as his aged and embittered spark could buster. It was an old rite, once sung by warriors of ancient times to honor fallen guardians. His voice was rough and cracked, not the choirs of heralds, but the medic could think of none more deserving. “And lead you through Primus’ great battlefield. May they sing your name with love and fury, so that we might hear it rise from the depths and know that you have taken your rightful place at the table of the Primes.” 

She fell quiet, then still. Then she was cold in his arms, and only then did Ratchet cry. Cradling both carrier and creation in his arms, he mourned them. He ground his denta and let the ache in his chassis loose of the iron grip of his control. 

“Be at peace.” It was a plea as much as an attempt at a blessing, spark seeking some affirmation that he had done the right thing. “Find it for those of us who cannot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The blessing Ratchet gives is borrowed and altered from How to Train your Dragon II


	9. The Exodus

Chaos.

Mecha swarmed the docks, shoving and screaming. The sky had vanished beneath a veil of fire and choking smog. The skyline of Iacon was blotted out, the spires of once grand towers broken and burning, raining debris and death down upon the helms of its citizens. The shriek of alarms and the scream of overclocked engines tore through the air, punctuated by explosions and the cackle of Seeker-fire. And all the while, mecha pushed forwards.

Hope, in the form of 3 dozen of Cyberton’s most powerful interstellar ships, stood proud and immovable amid the fire and smoke. And standing taller than them all, a monument of strength and ingenuity, stood The Ark, hull gleaming in the firelight and steam coiling around its base.

Decepticon aerials swarmed the Autobot flag ship, dark specks barely distinguishable against the turmoil unfurling around them. Missiles exploded against the ship’s shields, and blue fire and shrapnel rained down on the surrounding ships and docks.

Mecha screamed and ducked but pushed ever onward.

The first ship, a private charter loaded past capacity, fired its rockets. Fire poured through the massive trenches below, and with a deafening roar, the vessel clawed its way up into the sky.

Seekers darted away from their primary target in an effort to stall the smaller ship. Splatters of red and yellow exploded against its hull, but the ship pushed on undaunted. The burning sky parted around it, twisting and curling around its thrusters like water falling over crystal.

And to a cheer of a million souls, the first ship departed Cybertron.

The world shattered.

Something as large as the ships slammed into one of the towers of Iacon, and 500 thousand tons of metal and glass fell.

The ground splintered and cracks opened like gaping maws. Highways and buildings collapsed into the deeps beneath Cybertron. Mecha screamed and scrambled, but futile were their efforts, and many fell. With new urgency, Iacon ran for the docks.

Another tower fell, tipping over in a shockwave of rending and tearing metal.

It struck a ship, splintering and dropping onto a docking bridge below.

Mecha on adjacent bridges screamed in horror as the tower pulled the bridge and its occupants down in an explosion of crystal and gleaming titanium. The ship rocked in its moorings and groaned under its new burden. Cables snapped taut and hydraulics strained to keep the massive vessel upright, but a few precise shots from passing Seekers shattered the last of its resolve.

With a crunch and groan, the ship toppled into the one next to it. And it too began to tip.

The next ship down the line, seeing the inevitable, shut its docking doors. Mecha pounded against the metal but were quick to retreat when thrusters activated in a storm of thunder and fire.

The vessel pushed up into the sky.

Without the support of the ship and unprepared to bear weight alone, the docking bridge buckled.

More ships took off, small and large, daring the fires in the sky over the chaos that had engulfed the ground. Seekers pursued them, and some returned to the ground in smoldering balls of debris. Only three ships remained, the Ark among them. Determined to see the remaining mecha to safety, they braced against the storm.

Another tower was struck from behind, and screams erupted from those on the bridge below that had seen. A crack split it through the middle of the edifice, shattering windows up and down.

Red smog pressed against it like a physical weight, shoving the tower towards the docks.

The mecha below cowered and tried to scatter. Those who understood the futility of it stood their ground, in honor or horror, as the mass descended upon them.

Destruction seemed inevitable until one of the remaining ships, rivaling the Ark in size, roared to life. But instead of following its successors into the sky, seams broke apart and plating shifted. Its moorings protested the motions but gave way when a massive arm transformed out and cashed down on the mechanism.

Free from the restraints, the mech transformed the rest of the way, and in the place of the towering ship stood the titanic guardian of the Autobots. With a roar of massive engines, he threw his mass against the falling tower, diverting its path away from the docks.

The cry that went up from the saved mecha was drowned out by a ground-shattering roar from the city, enraged and born of pure malice.

“**OMEGA SUPREME**!” the red storm surrounding Iacon parted to reveal another mech, if the title of mech could be given to the creature that could crush towers with a swipe of his claws alone. Fire spilled like liquid smelt from a massive maw, lined with serrated denta larger than combiners, and a monstrous tail swept clean the foundations out from under a building behind him.

“Omega!” Another mech, voice barely a whisper amid the maelstrom that the city had become, leaned precariously out the hangar doors of the Ark with one arm charred down to the strut. He shouted above the chaos, his terrified gaze locked on the shuttle mech. “NO!”

There was only one mech who had ever stood his ground against Trypticon, but Metroplex had not been heard from in eons. The shuttle mech stood unperturbed as he stepped toward his foe.

“**Trypticon**,” Omega Supreme’s voice resounded with force rivaling the city-former’s.

With a snarl that shook Cybertron to its core, Trypticon lunged.

Omega Supreme met the city-former halfway, clawed servo rising to catch the destructive swing of that tail. His smaller size allowed him to slip between the limited range of the larger mech’s arms, and his cannon lifted in an offensive of his own.

The resounding explosion shook the Ark in its moorings, and Trypticon stumbled back with a charred crater in his chassis.

Omega Supreme followed, but Trypticon reared back out of range and unleashed a torrent of liquid fire from his maw upon the shuttle mech. Automated guns whirred to life all along the city-former’s frame, and began unloading his immense stores of fire-power in every form he had. The world turned to molten fire and burning metal, and Omega braced against the storm, bodily shielding the docks from destruction as the last mecha loaded into the Ark.

The city-former attacked while Omega was blinded, latching his massive jaw around the other mech’s shoulder. Plating buckled, armor split, and energon burst around the immense pressure of that bestial maw.

“OMEGA!”

The shuttle mech grunted under the onslaught but held his ground, not allowing his foe a single unit closer to the docks as the last of Cybertron’s citizens vanished into the Ark.

“**Ratchet**,” he called back to the red and white mech who refused to leave his position despite the pleas of his comrades.

Seekers were wearing down the shields, the docks were a veritable inferno, and the Decepticon flagship was entering city airspace. Omega would not be able to hold back Trypticon for much longer. He could already feel his armor being stripped away under the heavy fire. Claws tore at him, and with every klik he could feel himself losing ground to the massive city-former.

He would not win this fight, but he’d be damned to pit if it was all for nothing.

“**Go**.”

Cybertron was lost.

Its people would not be.


End file.
